GUEST COLUMN: A former PWBTS columnist and professional musician gives his thoughts on Kid Rock's induction into WWE Hall of Fame (language NSFW)

A PROFESSIONAL MUSICIAN AND FORMER PRO WRESTLING COLUMNIST SHOOTS ON KID ROCKS WWE HOF INDUCTION

Did I just hear right today? The WWE is going to induct Kid Rock into their Hall of Fame as their token celebrity inductee this year? For Christs sake, what the actual fuck is the reasoning and logic behind this move? What did this opportunistic, no-talent, trend-hopping charlatan of a recording artist do with the WWE to merit such an opportunity in the first place?

Letting WWE Entertainment use his song American Badass (Hey, kids, watch me sample Metallicas Sad But True for the token newsong on a stopgap compilation CD of my pre-Bawitaba material!) as the Undertakers entrance music? Doing an appearance on Monday Night Raw to play the song in a cross-promotional gimmick? Doing a shitty techno cover of ZZ Tops Legs for a WWE compilation CD that did no favors for either ZZ Top (not counting an advance payment on mechanical royalties) or techno music?

Am I missing anything else? Surely Im not the only one that has noticed that for his entiremusical career, Kid Rock went from a goofy-looking white rapper trying to keep his Caucasian hair in a KidnPlay hairdo while doing half-assed novelty rap for Jive Records (and sucking up financial resources better saved for the more talented hip-hop artists on Jives roster at the time, especially A Tribe Called Quest and Too $hort), to riding the rap-metal/nu metal wave with hisbreakthrough hits Bawitabaand Cowboy, to trying to be a modern day classic rock revivalist (thankfully, his terrible cover of Bad Companys Feel Like Making Love tanked), to riding the brastrap of Sheryl Crow in order to parlay his last major visit to the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, to trying to ride the bro-country wave alongside the likes of Luke Bryan (the less said about that, the better)...If contributing theme songs was his main qualification to WWE culture, why isnt Motorhead in the WWE Hall Of Fame?

After all, Motorhead and Triple H helped each other get over in more ways than one, and Lemmy and Triple H became close friends. Did Trips make the suggestion only to get turned down by his in-laws? Hell, why not any of the other recording artists that had theme songs commissioned by the WWE over the past twenty-five years? Should any of them be enshrined? A lot of people who also found the idea of Kid Rock getting a WWE HOF spot repugnant asked, Why not Insane Clown Posse instead?

Hell, ICP lifelong pro wrestling aficionados who, according to their backstory, first met at WrestleMania III did angles in all three of the major promotions, starting with ECWs second ever pay-per-view Living Dangerously 1997, before going over to the WWF and then WCW for brief spells even actually getting into the ring in the latter promotion before realizing, the morning after Shaggy 2 Dope did a fall off of Mike Awesomes Partridge Family bus that they were better off being bookers in their own promotion when they werent being working musicians! If any white rap-rock act is worthy ofbeing in the HOF, its ICP. Besides, as Bob Magee pointed out at this site a couple of times, Terry Funk told him that ICP were very smart businessmen.

But if youre going to induct a musician into the WWE Hall Of Fame, shouldnt it be someone who made a truly positive contribution to professional wrestling? Someone who popularized the sport/art form into the mainstream, a decade or so before the nWo and the Attitude Era? Someone who brought pro wrestling out of the shadows of late night weekend television and the occasional telecast Madison Square Garden or Philadelphia Spectrum house show? Someone whose participation in the WWF ended up semi-directly into the creation of WrestleMania in the first place?

Ill be blunt. Why the fuck isnt Cyndi Lauper already in the WWE Hall Of Fame? Its not an honor she needs when she wrote and recorded Time After Time and released it as the second single from her first solo album, that song ended up becoming a new standard (thanks to jazz icon Miles Davis opening the floodgates with his inaugural cover of the song) in the Great American Songbook, a song covered almost as much as The BeatlesYesterday at this point in time.

That songs mechanical and performance royalties, which have enabled her to make the music she wants to make, rather than the music her record company wanted her to make ever since, will be paying her grandchildrens grandchildrens bills down the line, for Christs sakes! She doesnt need to be inducted into the WWE HOF. But she deserves the honor a whole hell of a lot more than a talentless putz like Kid Rock.

CJ Marsicano, presently a professional musician and songwriter with his own alternative rock band Insomnia Station, founded one of the earliest online pro-wrestling newsletters in 1997 with The Outsider Edge, has been a contributing writer for PWBTS and Scoops Central, and operated the web presence of ECW Original Queen Of Extreme Francine Fournier between 1997 and 2000. This is the first column about professional wrestling that hes written since retiring his column Breaking Kayfabe in 2003. He can be found at www.cjmarsicano.me, on Facebook with his band Insomnia Station at www.facebook.com/InsomniaStationOfficial, and on Twitter and Instagram at @CJMarsicano